


Pick in the Ice

by heartkeepingopenhouse



Category: Gone Girl (2014), Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn
Genre: Implied/Referenced Suicide, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 21:30:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5471441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartkeepingopenhouse/pseuds/heartkeepingopenhouse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pick in the Ice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GwendolynGrace](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GwendolynGrace/gifts).



23\. 

There are bodies piling up in the cells. 

22\. 

There are bodies piling up in the cells. Rhonda swallows Ambien dry and doesn’t return any of her missed calls.

21\. 

How many people has Amy Elliott Dunne killed? One, and while it’s nothing to sneeze at, it’s also not nearly enough to call it a habit. That’s before she goes to prison.

After she goes to prison?

Well.

Depends on your definition of killed. 

20.

“Come back soon, please.”

Rhonda nods, jerkily, and turns and walks down the corridor, Amy’s laughter ringing in her ears.

In her pocket she’s holding a knife very tightly. As she turns a corner she slips, falls, catches herself on the edge of the wall. 

19\. 

“I can’t tell what you want,” Amy says. 

Rhonda just looks at her. Straight on. Fight the shudder, and look the snake straight in the eye.

Amy sighs. “I am glad you came to talk to me. I get so bored in this little cell.”

“Nick and Nick Jr. don’t come visit?”

“Oh, well. Nick comes alone now. Go thought little Nicky would cry if he knew his mother was a murderer.” Breezy, cool, completely, predictably, uninterested.

“Mrs. Dunne,” Rhonda says. “What’s it going to take for people to stop killing themselves whenever they cross you?”

Amy leans closer to the partition. “What’s it going to take,” she asks, honey sweet, “for them to behave properly?”

18.

“A woman in Amy Dunne’s cell block killed herself last night, Boney.”

Rhonda doesn’t look up from the coffee machine. “Why do I care?” Her voice isn’t shaking. It seems that if you spend significant time with the Dunnes, your capacity for bullshit increases exponentially.

“No prior signs of depression, no evidence of foul play. We asked around.” Gilpin’s voice is flinty. Good. He’s learned. “Jessica Charles. Last week she punched Amy in the face over a cigarette.” 

“That would do it.” 

“It would.”

17.

Amy has a lovely voice, it has been noted. Low and clear. The kind of voice that makes people lean in to hear it better. 

Amy’s voice winds through the cell block like silk, to find Jessica Charles. 

Jessica chokes on it. 

16.

Rhonda finds herself laughing at Amy’s jokes, smiling at her little witticisms. Rhonda knows exactly what Amy is and will never let herself forget it, but Amy can also be very very charming when she needs to be. 

Amy makes friends easily and discards them quickly. Despite the initial “rich bitch” cloak, Amy makes lots of friends her first week in prison. 

Amy, it must be said, gets bored very easily. 

15\. 

How charming is Amy Dunne? Enough that the public almost still sides with her. Enough that she gets a life sentence in a women’s prison rather than the chair or solitary.

Enough that she gets letters every day. 

Enough that Ellen Abbott absconds from covering the story entirely, despite the backlash she gets for doing so. 

14\. 

“Don’t piss her off,” Tanner Bolt says, smiling, dead (hah) serious.

13.

“What’s the book called?” Rhonda asks.

“Amazing”, Amy says, and Rhonda, startled, begins to laugh. 

12.

“What are you planning here?”

Amy smiles to herself. “A girl needs her secrets, Detective Boney.”

She isn’t wearing her wedding ring. 

11.

This was not an unwinnable case, especially not for Tanner Bolt, despite everything, despite the people crawling out of the woodwork to accuse Amazing Amy Elliott (and what a shock, Nick is holding them back, and actually, sometimes, succeeding.) But it would involve a public dragging, public doubt, cameras in Amy’s face held by people who aren’t afraid to openly hate her.

“Mrs. Dunne,” Rhonda says down the line. “Amy. I’m coming to see you.” 

10.

Amy calls her.

“Do you want me to come down to talk?” Keep it light, keep it casual.

“There’s no need.” Amy’s voice is cold, detached. “I’ve decided to plead guilty. I thought you might want to know first.” 

9.

“Please don’t do this,” Nick Dunne says. His face does not suit desperation. 

“Please don’t do this,” he says again. “Please. I want my family together. I want a life with Amy and my son.”   
“Please don’t do this,” he says, “I don’t want you to do this.”

“It’s not always just about you, Nick,” Rhonda says, finally, and waits for him to walk away first. 

8.

Amy may yet walk away without doing any time or paying any fee, if Tanner Bolt has anything to do with it (his and hers murder trials, he must feel so special) but Rhonda still wants her chance in court to speak. Amy called her incompetent, and everyone who was in the room will continue to believe it until the trial. 

It’s rare for a cop in this town to get so caught up in any one case. Most of her colleagues assume she has a little thing for Nick Dunne. Some assume she has a little thing for someone else, and Gilpin tells her about the whispers after she passes through the hallway. 

Rhonda doesn’t want Nick, if you were curious. And she doesn’t want Amy, either. She thinks touching her would feel like marble. 

7.

Rhonda calls Amy Dunne, speaks in clipped sentences and pretends she isn’t delighted. 

Amy Dunne thanks her, hangs up, and calls her husband. 

6.

Desi Collings’ mother never quite trusted him with his own safety, so she had her own cameras installed one long weekend that he was away. These cameras are so well hidden that even Amy Dunne can’t see them. They aren’t on record with the rest of the monitors, so the police, who are doing a cursory check because the case is in essence closed, and good riddance, don’t find it the first time. 

Jacqueline waits until Amy gives birth to rectify the mistake. Rhonda suspects she’s been making copies. 

5.

“Well, Detective Boney,” Amy says carefully, once the coffee is drunk and she’s sung the appropriate song about leaving the dishes to her. “It’s been lovely to have you here.”

“Just wanted to check in,” Rhonda repeats, big toothy smile on her face. “Make sure you were doing well.” 

“I so appreciate it,” Amy places her hand on Rhonda’s shoulder with the expression of someone who desperately wants her to get the fuck out of her house. 

“I’ll get out of your hair in a second, I promise. I just wanted to give you my card, while Nick isn’t here.”

“While Nick - ”

“Look,” Rhonda says, looking serious. “Your husband’s kind of an asshole. I know you want to stay with him, but if you ever need anything -” 

Amy laughs, takes the card. “Thank you,” she says, genuinely. “I appreciate that. Goodbye, Detective.”

4.

Did you hear about Amazing Amy?

Smashed over the head and dragged out of her front door. 

Dead, you mean?

But she came back.

She came back.

3\. 

“And I hope you know,” Amy says, carrying over two cups of coffee, “how sorry I am for those things I said to you in the hospital. I don’t think I can even tell you how horrified I was at myself, later. I guess I’m just so protective of Nick.” 

“Well, you know,” Rhonda tells her, leaning in close to take the coffee and not quite leaning away when she sips it, “I always thought there was more to this case than what met the eye. I knew something was off.”

Amy nods, adopted orphan smile, her eyes wide. 

“But of course we had a lot of pressure from the public to make an arrest. The media - ”

Rhonda makes a vague, meaningless gesture and Amy nods again, smile unmoving. You’d have to be a prime idiot, Rhonda thinks, to think she was engaged in this conversation. 

“Well, obviously, I don’t think you were murdered by your husband anymore.” 

Amy smiles at her. “The way you talk, I’d think you never thought I was at all.” 

“Well,” Rhonda says, taking a careful sip, “the case was a complex one.” 

Amy’s smile is frozen on her face. 

2.

Rhonda had a feeling about this case from the start, and she’ll swear it up and down until the day she dies.

That diary was never real.

There’s no way the girl was that fucking dumb. 

1\. 

“Detective Boney,” Amy says, sounding surprised. 

“Hi, Mrs. Dunne,” Rhonda says, her stance wide. “Just wanted to check in, make sure everything was going well.”

“It’s going perfectly,” Amy snarls, or smiles. “Won’t you come in?”

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired structurally by quigonejinn's "Beast of Burden." and in content by the part in Silence of the Lambs where Hannibal convinces Miggs to swallow his own tongue.


End file.
